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Claimed off waivers from the Minnesota Twins, Dodgers relief pitcher J.T. Chargois could be a key piece of their 2018 bullpen. He pitched a scoreless seventh inning in Thursday’s 1-0 season-opening loss to the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES — For all of its charms, not to mention its status as an unofficial national holiday, Opening Day is the ultimate small sample size.

But the Dodgers might have had their thought process reinforced Thursday, even as Ty Blach and four Giants relievers reminded them that this definitely isn’t 2017 any more.

In the course of Thursday’s 1-0 loss to their ancient rivals, one perfect inning of relief by J.T. Chargois by itself meant little. But for those who looked closer, it was a message: They’re at it again.

“They” would refer to Dodgers management. “It” would refer to the art – and what else can you call it? – of taking players off the scrap heap and turning them into productive major leaguers.

Especially relief pitchers. Two years ago, the Dodgers turned Joe Blanton from a failed starting pitcher into a dependable bridge to Kenley Jansen. Last year, having let Blanton walk to Washington, they took a guy who started the season in the minor leagues, Brandon Morrow, and he turned into a lights-out setup guy and parlayed that into a nice contract with the Cubs.

And now it is Chargois, The Dodgers pounced when the Minnesota Twins tried to sneak the former second-round draft pick through waivers in February, shortly after spring training began. He’s a 27-year-old right-hander who pitched in 25 games for the Twins in 2016 but missed almost all of 2017 with an elbow injury, described as a stress reaction on the outside of his elbow.

In other words, he fits the profile of the prototypical Dodger bullpen candidate: Flawed, injured or for whatever reason overlooked, but with plenty of upside.

Andrew Friedman, the club’s president of baseball operations, said it during spring training to SCNG’s Bill Plunkett: “It’s similar to the last couple years. Standing here in spring training, we didn’t really know who was going to pitch meaningful innings for us – but we knew we had enough options and interesting guys with compelling upside stories that we’d figure it out.”

Yes, there’s more than a touch of arrogance in that attitude. Then again, if you can do it, it’s not bragging.

So Chargois (pronounced shag-wa, as befits his Cajun roots) was soaking up the excitement of his first major league Opening Day when he was called on to replace Clayton Kershaw in the seventh inning Thursday. He navigated it in 12 pitches, striking out Austin Jackson and Andrew McCutchen and getting Joe Panik on a grounder to second, using primarily four-seamers and sliders.

His four-seamer gets more ground balls than most, historically, and he was consistently around 94-95 mph with it Thursday night, complimenting it with a slider that sat around 84 and reached 87.

“It was his first game in a while, and you never really know what to expect from a guy who hasn’t pitched on this stage, Opening Day,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s very excitable, full of youthful enthusiasm. We sort of threw him into the fire, and he executed pitches. His stuff really plays.

“There was a lot of emotion, but he’s shown that he can channel it in the right way.”

How so?

“A lot of focused energy, and just executing pitches,” Chargois said. “That’s really where all the attention goes. It’s just a tunnel vision.”

It is easy to get caught up in the atmosphere of the opener, especially when you haven’t experienced it. Chargois talked of how he wished he’d been able to watch Kershaw’s bullpen warmup – “I did that all spring,” he said – and he did soak up the atmosphere. But when bullpen coach Mark Prior told him he was the seventh-inning guy, the businesslike side took over.

He seems to be very good at staying in the moment, and doesn’t seem terribly interested in reflecting on the path that led him here.

Most of what he did to reinvent himself, he said, came before he joined the Dodgers, an overhaul that involved “getting reacquainted with the fundamentals.”

And maybe that tunnel vision is what will enable him to be that next notable Dodger reclamation project, one of the 2018 components of a bullpen that, in order to get the ball to Kenley Jansen in the ninth, seems to reinvent itself on the fly on a yearly basis.

“The focus is really just take it one day at a time, and that’s kind of transferred into one pitch at a time,” Chargois said. “It’s really quite simple and nothing too complex.

“My focus is right now, and whatever I can do to better myself right now and take care of my immediate goals. And that’s what I’m focused on. But every opportunity each day is a blessing, and I’m going to try and take advantage of it.”

If this works out, he’ll be the latest example of the Dodger Way To Build A Bullpen. Maybe someone should write a book about it.

Jim Alexander is an Inland Empire native who started with his hometown newspaper, The Press-Enterprise, longer ago than he cares to admit. He's been a sports columnist off and on since 1992, and a full-time columnist since 2010. Yes, he's opinionated, but no, that's not the only club in his bag. He's covered every major league and major sports beat in Southern California over the years, so not much surprises him any more. (And he and Justin Turner have this in common: Both attended Cal State Fullerton. Jim has no plans to replicate Turner's beard.)